{"product_id":"bright-star-isbn-9780143117742","title":"Bright Star","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe epic romance of one of the most celebrated poets in the English language \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Coming to theatres in September 2009 is the tragic love story of nineteenth- century poet John Keats and the love of his life, Fanny Brawne. Keats died at the young age of twenty-five, leaving behind some of the most exquisite and moving verse and letters ever written, inspired by his deep love for Fanny. \u003ci\u003eBright Star\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of Keats' romantic poems and correspondence in the heat of his passion, and is a dazzling display of a talent cut cruelly short.John Keats was born in October 1795, son of the manager of a livery stable in Moorfields. His father died in 1804 and his mother, of tuberculosis, in 1810. By then he had received a good education at John Clarke’s Enfield private school. In 1811 he was apprenticed to a surgeon, completing his professional training at Guy’s Hospital in 1816. His decision to commit himself to poetry rather than a medical career was a courageous one, based more on a challenge to himself than any actual achievement. \u003cp\u003eHis genius was recognized and encouraged by early Mends like Charles Cowden Clarke and J. H. Reynolds, and in October 1816 he met Leigh Hunt, whose Examiner had already published Keats’s first poem. Only seven months later Poems (1817) appeared. Despite the high hopes of the Hunt circle, it was a failure. By the time Endymion was published in 1818 Keats’s name had been identified with Hunt’s ‘Cockney School’, and the Tory \u003cb\u003eBlackwood’s Magazine\u003c\/b\u003e delivered a violent attack on Keats as a lower-class vulgarian, with no right to aspire to ‘poetry’.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut for Keats fame lay not in contemporary literary politics but with posterity. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth were his inspiration and challenge. The extraordinary speed with which Keats matured is evident from his letters. In 1818 he had worked on the powerful epic fragment Hyperion, and in 1819 he wrote ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, the major odes, Lamia, and the deeply exploratory Fall of Hyperion. Keats was already unwell when preparing the 1820 volume for the press; by the time it appeared in July he was desperately ill. He died in Rome in 1821. Keats’s final volume did receive some contemporary critical recognition, but it was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that his place in English Romanticism began to be recognized, and not until this century that it became fully recognized.\u003c\/p\u003eBright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--\u003cbr\u003eNot in lone splendour hung aloft the night\u003cbr\u003eAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,\u003cbr\u003eLike nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,\u003cbr\u003eThe moving waters at their priestlike task\u003cbr\u003eOf pure ablution round earth's human shores,\u003cbr\u003eOr gazing on the new soft-fallen mask\u003cbr\u003eOf snow upon the mountains and the moors--\u003cbr\u003eNo--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,\u003cbr\u003ePillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,\u003cbr\u003eTo feel for ever its soft fall and swell,\u003cbr\u003eAwake for ever in a sweet unrest,\u003cbr\u003eStill, still to hear her tender-taken breath,\u003cbr\u003eAnd so live ever--or else swoon to death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eLa Belle Dame Sans Merci\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAh, what can ail thee, wretched wight, \u003cbr\u003e Alone and palely loitering; \u003cbr\u003eThe sedge is wither'd from the lake, \u003cbr\u003e And no birds sing. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAh, what can ail thee, wretched wight, \u003cbr\u003e So haggard and so woe-begone? \u003cbr\u003eThe squirrel's granary is full, \u003cbr\u003e And the harvest's done. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI see a lily on thy brow, \u003cbr\u003e With anguish moist and fever dew; \u003cbr\u003e And on thy cheek a fading rose \u003cbr\u003e Fast withereth too.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI met a lady in the meads \u003cbr\u003e Full beautiful, a faery's child; \u003cbr\u003eHer hair was long, her foot was light, \u003cbr\u003e And her eyes were wild. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI set her on my pacing steed, \u003cbr\u003e And nothing else saw all day long; \u003cbr\u003e For sideways would she lean, and sing \u003cbr\u003e A faery's song. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI made a garland for her head, \u003cbr\u003e And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; \u003cbr\u003eShe look'd at me as she did love, \u003cbr\u003e And made sweet moan. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe found me roots of relish sweet, \u003cbr\u003e And honey wild, and manna dew; \u003cbr\u003eAnd sure in language strange she said, \u003cbr\u003e I love thee true. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe took me to her elfin grot, \u003cbr\u003e And there she gaz'd and sighed deep, \u003cbr\u003eAnd there I shut her wild sad eyes-- \u003cbr\u003e So kiss'd to sleep. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd there we slumber'd on the moss, \u003cbr\u003e And there I dream'd, ah woe betide, \u003cbr\u003eThe latest dream I ever dream'd \u003cbr\u003e On the cold hill side. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI saw pale kings, and princes too, \u003cbr\u003e Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; \u003cbr\u003eWho cry'd--\"La belle Dame sans merci \u003cbr\u003e Hath thee in thrall!\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI saw their starv'd lips in the gloam \u003cbr\u003e With horrid warning gaped wide, \u003cbr\u003eAnd I awoke, and found me here \u003cbr\u003e On the cold hill side.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd this is why I sojourn here \u003cbr\u003e Alone and palely loitering, \u003cbr\u003eThough the sedge is wither'd from the lake, \u003cbr\u003e And no birds sing. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303817138405,"sku":"NP9780143117742","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143117742.jpg?v=1767723080","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/bright-star-isbn-9780143117742","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}